There's another obstacle U of L faces WRT to a football program like Clemson's, and that's location. We can't recruit a team full of 4-star and high 3-star players in our backyard. And the climate here isn't conducive to football year round. Obviously, national programs north of Louisville have overcome that, but there are few, if any, that are in building mode.
Offsetting that is Louisville athletics are the only action in a good-sized town. Some kids nowadays wanna come here because of that, e.g., the football program is billed as the town's "NFL team." Louisville's not much smaller locally than Nashville, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis which have NFL teams.
Could be a beauty-in-diversity situation. We're different but with a common objective: to excel in football...